How to get the Suika Game (Watermelon Game) on Nintendo Switch

You may have seen streamers play what has been labeled as “Japan’s hardest game,” Suika Game, a fruit drop game where you combine fruit together in a 2048-ish fashion until you run out of space.

There is a free version you can play on your browser, but this is not the version streamers are playing — it’s a simplified version with slightly different scoring, physics, and rules. (In the Nintendo Switch Suika Game, you can see the next fruit you’ll have to drop, like Tetris, but you can’t in the browser version.) It should also be mentioned that there are also several dupes of the game on the iOS app store, but they all seem like ill-conceived clones.

If you want to play the Suika Game, you’ll need a Japanese Nintendo account to access the Japanese eShop and a source to pay for it. The game costs 240 yen (a little under $2).

How to get a Japanese Nintendo account

It’s actually super easy to make a Japanese Nintendo account.

1. Go to register a new Nintendo account.
2. Fill in all your info as you would, but make sure the email isn’t already associated with a Nintendo account.
3. Select Japan for “country/region of residence.”
4. That’s literally it.

How to set up your Japanese Nintendo account on your Nintendo Switch

You’ll need to add a user to your Nintendo Switch that is linked to the Japanese Nintendo account you just made. You can do that by following these steps:

1. Open your Nintendo Switch settings and then select “users.”
2. Select “add user.”
3. Add a new profile and, when prompted to link it to a Nintendo account, log in using your Japanese Nintendo account.

That’s all you have to do. Once you do download Suika Game, you won’t have to use this account to play, so long as this is your Japanese account’s “home Switch.” We’ve been launching the game through our usual profile and we’ve been playing just fine.

How to buy Suika Game on Switch or eShop

There are two ways to get Suika Game. You can buy it on a browser and it’ll automatically download to your Switch, or you can buy it through the eShop. The eShop offers more payment options but requires a tiny bit of keyboard language fussing. The browser option is just a checkout process, but you may need to figure out a specific payment option.

To download via browser, do the following:

1. Head to the Nintendo eShop page for Suika Game.
2. Add it to your cart.
3. Either use a valid credit card or Japanese eShop gift card to buy the game.

The Nintendo eShop website would not accept our American credit card, so we had to resort to buying a 500 yen Japanese eShop gift card and applying that balance to our account. With this, we were able to nab the precious Suika Game.

Some people have reported that you can buy the Suika Game through Paypal successfully if you buy it through your console. If you don’t know how to write using the Japanese alphabet, this can be tricky. To grab the Suika Game through your Switch, do the following:

1. Open the eShop as your Japanese user.
2. Head to the search function and select the globe on the keyboard.
3. Scroll down to the first Japanese option: 日本語ローマ字入力.
4. Type in “suika” using the keyboard.
5. Select the option “スイカ” from the autofill bar above the keyboard.
6. Hit enter.
7. Select the Suika Game and head to checkout via Paypal.

Now you’re ready to score above 3,000 and win in Suika Game.